Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
A number of scientific methods have been developed in the medical field to measure physiological conditions of a person. For example, devices exist that may be used to measure physiological conditions such as a user's heart rate, blood pressure, skin temperature, breathing rate, etc.
Additional physiological parameters may be obtained by detecting and/or measuring one or more analytes in a person's blood. The one or more analytes could be any analytes that, when present in or absent from the blood, or present at a particular concentration or range of concentrations, may be indicative of a medical condition or health of the person. The one or more analytes could include enzymes, hormones, proteins, cells or other molecules.
In a typical scenario, a person's blood is drawn and sent to a lab where a variety of tests are performed to measure various analyte levels and parameters in the blood. The variety of tests may be referred to as “blood work,” where the blood is tested for the presence of various diseases, or analyte levels such as cholesterol levels, etc. For most people, the blood tests are infrequent, and an abnormal analyte level indicative of a medical condition may not be identified until the next blood test is performed.
Even in the case of relatively frequent blood testing, such as may be found with those with diabetes, who regularly draw blood to test for blood glucose concentrations, those blood tests are typically performed when the user is awake, although the blood glucose levels (and potential variations in such levels) occurring during the night could provide important information to assist a physician in assessing that person's medical condition.